Fatherless Children

A moving, elegantly written, and exhaustively researched account of what it means for a girl to lose a father to death or divorce—with advice for fatherless daughters on how to cope. “People who lose their parents early in life are like fellow war veterans. As soon as they discover that they are talking to someone else who has lost a parent, they know they are speaking the same language without uttering a word.” Pamela Thomas gives voice to this unspoken pain in Fatherless Daughters. Still haunted by her own father’s death when she was ten, Thomas decided to explore its effects. Though her journey began as a personal one, she soon felt the need to hear from other women and ended up interviewing more than one hundred fatherless women. They ranged in age from nineteen to ninety-four; they came from all areas of the country as well as Europe and Asia; some had lost their fathers to death, others to divorce or abandonment. Each account was unique, but the impact of a father’s loss was profound in every woman’s life. Thomas begins by defining what it means to be a father in our world. She discusses the initial shock of his loss, exploring the aspects that color how a young girl experiences it: her age at the time of her father’s death or abandonment, her mother’s behavior and attitudes, her place in the family vis-à-vis siblings, and the influence of a stepfather or father-surrogates. Thomas shows how a father’s early death or abandonment affects a woman’s emotional health and self-esteem, her body image, her sexual experiences, her marriage, her family life, and her career. Perhaps most important, Thomas offers compassionate advice for coming to terms with father loss, even late in life, from actively mourning, to healing, to starting fresh.

Drawing from culture, stories, and his own personal experience, John Sowers presents the desperate reality of fatherlessness in his generation. Fatherless Generation is a hard-hitting, descriptive look at this issue, showing how awareness, compassion, and mentoring are the keys to writing new stories of hope.

This book is about saving the lives of hundreds of “at risk” teens and my struggle as a young boy after migrating to Washington, DC from rural Mississippi in the early fifties. After my mother enrolled me in a public school, the guidance counselor evaluated my record and demoted me one grade. My teachers told me that I was not college material. We were a proud family and this treatment upon arrival only served to ignite a fi re in my mother and me. Not only did I excel, I applied, and was accepted to the prestigious Dunbar High School in Washington. I was sent to Detroit, Michigan by the Johnson Administration with a group of experts to examine the reasons behind the rioting, burning and destruction in 1967. It was there that I received my Masters Degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. It was here that I saw poverty, children who were underserved and uneducated. I saw mothers who were reaching out for assistance and desperately needed a helping hand, and I saw myself and my family in their eyes. HERE was my destiny - God had His hand on my life. Through faith, and working hard, I had overcome some difficult odds. I started on a never-ending path of teaching, mentoring, and child advocacy. I became a counselor for “at-risk” children. I earned my Doctorate from Virginia Tech and State University, I became a guidance counselor, a school principal, an acting Deputy Superintendent and more. I was an adjunct professor. As you continue to read, you will see why and how I feel I was predestined to serve and save the lives of young people. I want to inspire more people to reach out to “at risk” teens. They need more resources and not less.

A broad-scale look at children without fathers, examining the causes and varieties of fatherlessness, the consequences of growing up without a father, the social conditions surrounding fatherlessness, and the implications for therapy with such children. Surveys all relevant research, including the effects of fatherlessness on the child's academic adjustment, sex role identification, delinquent behavior, and mental health/mental disorder. Also includes a feminist critique of the role of the father in the child's development.

“This groundbreaking work will give voice to an enormous population of women who are struggling to understand themselves in the face of their fathers’ absence.” —Claire Bidwell Smith, author of The Rules of Inheritance and After This When Motherless Daughters was published 20 years ago, it unleashed a tsunami of healing awareness. When Denna Babul and Karin Smithson couldn't find the equivalent book for fatherlessness, The Fatherless Daughter Project was born. The book will set fatherless women on the path to growth and fulfillment by helping them to understand how their loss has impacted their lives. A father is supposed to provide a sense of security and stability. Losing a father comes with particular costs that vary depending on the way he left and how old a girl was when she lost him. Drawing on interviews with over 5000 women who became fatherless due to death, divorce, neglect, and outright abandonment, the authors have found that fatherless daughters tend to push their emotions underground. These issues in turn become distinct patterns in their relationships as adult women and they often can't figure out why. Delivered with compassion and expertise, this book allows readers support and understanding they never had when they first needed it, and it encourages the conversation to continue.

"With passion and precision, Fatherless America demonstrates that whether our concern is with teenage pregnancy, crime, violence against women, educational failure, or child poverty, no social trend of our generation is more dangerous than fatherlessness. It weakens families, harms children, causes or aggravates our worst social problems, and makes individual adult happiness harder to achieve." "This explosive book goes beyond documenting the effects of fatherlessness on individual families to show how the very ideal of fatherhood is under siege - with devastating consequences for society at large. Fathers are increasingly seen as expendable - or as part of the problem. "Does every child need a father?" David Blankenhorn asks. "Increasingly, our answer is 'no,' or at least 'not necessarily.'""--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Praise for Fatherless Sons "Research shows that most men now are better fathers than their own fathers were to them. A generation of men are 'making it up,' giving to their children more than they received. No one describes the poignancy--and hope--of contemporary fatherhood better than Jonathan Diamond's heartfelt and insightful new book. For every man who had a father--and who wants to be one." --Terrence Real, author of I Don't Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression and How Can I Get Through to You?: Closing the Intimacy Gap Between Men and Women "Diamond's moving account of his relationship with his father is a nuanced exploration of mourning and its aftermath." --Publishers Weekly "This is a powerful and beautiful book, written with warmth, humor, and generosity of spirit. Fatherless Sons guides us through the complex journey of grief, helping to transform pain and anguish into hope and healing." --Dr. Dusty Miller, author of Your Surviving Spirit and Women Who Hurt Themselves

The impact of absent fathers on sons in the black community has been a subject for cultural critics and sociologists who often deal in anonymous data. Yet many of those sons have themselves addressed the issue in autobiographical works that form the core of African American literature. A Fatherless Child examines the impact of fatherlessness on racial and gender identity formation as seen in black men’s autobiographies and in other constructions of black fatherhood in fiction. Through these works, Tara T. Green investigates what comes of abandonment by a father and loss of a role model by probing a son’s understanding of his father’s struggles to define himself and the role of community in forming the son’s quest for self-definition in his father’s absence. Closely examining four works—Langston Hughes’s The Big Sea, Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Malcolm X’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father—Green portrays the intersecting experiences of generations of black men during the twentieth century both before and after the Civil Rights movement. These four men recall feeling the pressure and responsibility of caring for their mothers, resisting public displays of care, and desiring a loving, noncontentious relationship with their fathers. Feeling vulnerable to forces they may have identified as detrimental to their status as black men, they use autobiography as a tool for healing, a way to confront that vulnerability and to claim a lost power associated with their lost fathers. Through her analysis, Green emphasizes the role of community as a father-substitute in producing successful black men, the impact of fatherlessness on self-perceptions and relationships with women, and black men’s engagement with healing the pain of abandonment. She also looks at why these four men visited Africa to reclaim a cultural history and identity, showing how each developed a clearer understanding of himself as an American man of African descent. A Fatherless Child conveys important lessons relevant to current debates regarding the status of African American families in the twenty-first century. By showing us four black men of different eras, Green asks readers to consider how much any child can heal from fatherlessness to construct a positive self-image—and shows that, contrary to popular perceptions, fatherlessness need not lead to certain failure.